New Yorker by birth & attitude, I live in Europe, where I am a Professor at IMD, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and where I co-direct the IMD/MIT-Sloan "Driving Strategic Innovation" program; and have had a long-time love affair with China, where we first moved our family to China in 1980, and where later I was the Executive President & Dean of CEIBS (the China-European International Business School) in Shanghai (1997-1999). I've recently co-authored (with Umberto Lago & Fang Liu) "Reinventing Giants" (2013) and (with Andy Boynton): "The Idea Hunter" (2011) and "Virtuoso Teams" (2005).

The Birth Of A Really Bad Idea: Peter Thiel And Knowing Less As A Life Strategy

2011 is the 100th anniversary of a really bad idea. In 1911, the British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s determination to learn less, rather than more — about life, clothing and diet in extreme cold conditions — led to his assuming that he was smarter than thousands of years of accumulated Eskimo knowledge, and also led ultimately to the death of his companions by starvation and exposure, as a direct result of his arrogance. Roland Huntford, who chronicled this [mis]adventure in his book The Last Place on Earth, characterized Scott’s willful ignorance as the result of hubris, plain and simple [according to Wikipedia, the ancient Greek word “hubris” refers to: “... a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.”].

Roald Amundsen, on the other hand, who was leading a far smaller, less-endowed and negligibly branded team of Norwegians, and who was racing to the South Pole against Scott, not only beat the British team to then most extreme point on the planet, but his team gained weight, on average, despite the challenges that they endured. What did Amundsen have that Scott lacked? Humility; and an openness to the ideas of others, plus a willingness to put in long, lonely months, studying the Greenland Eskimos (at a time when learning from such aboriginal peoples were distinctly out of fashion), to learn about dress, diet, and living in the cold. One result was that while Scott’s team was outfitted by Burberry, Amundsen’s wore Eskimo clothing. One team looked better, the other team survived.

Amundsen’s success in the race to the Pole symbolizes the power of both learning before doing, as well as learning from diverse sources. The importance of these success factors came to mind when I read about the initiative of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to encourage bright young people to drop-out of university so that they can get right to work as entrepreneur-aspirants. Thiel is offering $100,000 apiece to 20 or so carefully selected young people in an effort to create more innovation by sponoring their pursuit of an entrepreneurial idea in Silicon Valley instead of going to college. The underlying message, apparently, is that knowing more about the world, and thousands of years of accumulated hunman knowledge, is no longer an advantage. It sure sounds a lot like Scott!

Mr. Thiel argues that there is an educational bubble in our society; I agree. He adds that the cost of education has risen to levels that make it unaffordable to many; I also agree. He has been quoted as saying that: “Universities are like the General Motors of the 1970s. They’re incredibly dominant, incredibly arrogant and impervious to change.” I agree with this as well. But despite all this agreement, to be honest, I can’t envision embracing a life-strategy — for that is what he is selling — where willful ignorance is the preferred route into the future.

Mr. Thiel, himself, has been incredibly successful, despite his undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford, and he has been characterized as a “people investor” for his interest in enlarging talent. His Founders Fund is making interesting bets on the future and, to his credit, he is looking for opportunities to move “our civilization to the next level” rather than merely doing more of the same. But, knowing things, appreciating nuances, reflecting on the historical record of our species, has got to be a huge advantage in building a better future for us all, and this can’t be done anywhere near as effectively on the front-lines of a commercial start-up as on a university campus. Can universities and business schools be vastly improved? Of course! Is encouraging the best and brightest to drop-out and learn less the best way to do that? I don’t think so, and I suspect that were it possible to query Scott about this, even he would agree that learning less is a bad life-strategy.

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It reminds me of an evening class I took years ago in Wash DC… the instructor said, “We do we learn”, which is true tho, and yet I felt the strong need to voice my opinion, I said, “If I may, for me it is, ‘I learn, I do, I learn…”… probably he felt bad (he had a PhD… how interesting, hmm? )

You assume that education is something that must take place in something called a school. I am the father of one of the Thiel Fellows. She educated herself because we could not find a school that would provide a decent education. Was accepted at Cal Tech and MIT at age 14. Did extremely well in her two years at MIT. What she is learning from the mentors and experiences in Silicon Valley is how to deal with the real world (including risk) as you learn.

My experience was that I had to “unlearn” just about everything I learned in schools outside of math and most science. Even those subjects were taught poorly. E.g., the economics I was taught turned out to be gibberish bearing no relationship to reality.

Education is born of curiosity about the world and a willingness to learn according to standards that for me are best defined by the scientific method.

In your example, one could argue that Amundsen went the “unschooled” route by, e.g., going to Greenland to learn from the Eskimos. That was probably also where he learned to use sled dogs. According to the then conventional wisdom, Amundsen was the “Thiel Fellow” of his day. He was the outlier.

It was Scott, the educated Brit, who played by the rules and ended up reaching the pole only to find the Amundsen’s Norwegian flag already there. Scott died before getting back to his ship. Scott felt that using dogs was a kind of cheating. Amundsen had no such compunctions. He and his men rode in to the pole and rode out again with no loss of health or life. They got in and out faster with less exertion.

Amundsen acted like an entrepreneur who understood the risk he was facing and acted accordingly. That’s what the Thiel Fellows are learning. Scott was like the guy who stayed in school (a place manifestly separated from reality) and never learned to think effectively about reality.

Incidentally, my daughter is thriving. And, yes, maybe what PT is doing won’t work. But I submit that just about anything, especially work in a business at a very early age, is better than school for most kids. Sure was for me.

Dear Mr. Deming, Thanks for this very thoughtful response, and I appreciate your arguments and experiences. I agree that formal educations are not for everyone and that they often do not live up to their promise (or their price). To be sure, there is a “school of real experiences” that may be perfect for someone with a great idea and little patience for abstract learning in institutional frameworks. I’m delighted that your daughter is one of those able to profit from such opportunities, and to be sponsored by PT to make that happen is a case in favor of both his and her credit. Done right, however, a good education should be an aid to the maturation of ideas and the idea-generator. It should reduce the likelihood of falling victim to hubris (which is a great threat to young ambition and to leadership competency, which is important if the idea takes-off), and provide both time and tools for introspection and self-understanding. Too often in the heat of trying to go to market or make the numbers, I see leaders lose sight of who they are, or what they are trying to accomplish, and I feel that they could benefit from a broadening of their perspective that they are less likely to get on the job. Your comments regarding Amundsen as the entrepreneur are correct. It was Scott who was educated, institutional, and yet still arrogant and resistant to learning. Amundsen did have the luxury of learning before having to make a payroll or perform on center stage and I think that this was the key to his “knowing more.” There is certainly no “one right way” to master entrepreneurship or leadership skills, and I am uncomfortable with defending much of what goes on in modern education. But I am more uncomfortable saying to young people that they should trust their judgement when it is often so unformed and uninformed. The successful entrepreneur is not an isolate, and many others will come to rely upon their leadership in organizational settings. It is here in the rise from “tinkerer” to “leader” that I think the skills and insights gained in the social and instructional settings of classroom discussion are so valuable and necessary. Bill Fischer

Mr Fischer, The picture of education you describe simply no longer exists anywhere in academia today. What I have seen in every single school I have ever spent time in is lousy training, mental ditch digging or political propaganda. Sure wasn’t education. Most of the “students” weren’t interested in learning to think and the “professors” were not interested in teaching.

There is no right way to master anything. Everyone has their own unique way of learning. Another problem with schools. Everyone is taught the same stupid way. Boring teacher stands up and lectures to uninterested students.

It wasn’t until I got the hell out of schools that I began to learn math and science. I heard Dean Kamen lecture at MIT last year. He said that he was a 5-year freshman because he never went to classes. Just kept inventing things and when he wanted answers to some problem he could not solve, he would go find someone at MIT that was more than happy to help him. He also said that he realized that he had a choice: (1) get an education or (2) get a degree. He chose the former.